Gaze-contingent displays with a high-resolution Area-of-Interest (AOI) window on a lower-resolution background can supply both fine detail and wide field of view. In previous reports, we investigated high-resolution insert windows with abrupt boundaries. New technology has allowed the evaluation of windows where the transition from high to low resolution is gradual. Two experiments were performed to evaluate the subjective and performance effects of the blended gaze-contingent window. The first experiment investigated the conditions under which the blending eliminates the subjective awareness of the window, determining the system delay (between an eye movement and the corresponding shift in window position) at which subject becomes unaware of the window. For blended windows, the maximum permissible delay depend on the level of detail in the background area. For moderate levels of detail, as much as 30 msec of delay could be present without the window being detectable. The second expeirment used objective measures of the effect of the blended window on visual search. Background detail, window size and distance of the target from search start (the central fixation target) were manipulated. Using the measure of latency of the first eye movement to the target, the blended and sharp-edged windows did not differ, even though the first experiment showed that the subjects were unaware of the window. TRUNCATED